A memory presented itself of six-year-old Artemis and his father walking the estate. As they passed the barn wall on the upper pasture, young Artemis pointed to the wall and commented. “See, Father? The cracks form a map of Croatia, once part of the Roman, Ottoman, and Austrian Habsburg empires. Were you aware that Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991?”
There it was. On the wall behind Pip and Kip. A map of Croatia, though fifteen-year-old Artemis saw now that the Dalmatian coastline was truncated.
They are on the Fowl Estate, he realized.
Why?
Something Dr. Argon had said resurfaced.
Because the residual magic there is off the scale. Something happened on the Fowl Estate once. Something huge, magically speaking.
Artemis decided to act on his hunch. “I’m at the Fowl Estate, waiting for Opal,” he said.
“You’re at Fowl Manor too?” blurted Kip, prompting Pip to turn rapidly and shoot his comrade in the heart. The gnome was punched backward into the wall, knocking clouds of dust from the plaster. A narrow stream of blood oozed from the hole in his chest, pulsing gently down his breastplate, as undramatic as a paint drip running down a jar. His kitty-cat cartoon face seemed comically surprised, and when the heat from his face faded, the pixels powered down, leaving a yellow question mark.
The sudden death shocked Artemis, but the preceding sentence had shocked him more.
He had been correct on both counts: not only was Opal behind this, but the rendezvous point was Fowl Manor.
Why? What had happened there?
Pip shouted at the screen. “You see what you did, human? If you are human. If you are Artemis Fowl. It doesn’t matter what you know, it’s too late.”
Pip pressed the still smoking barrel to Opal’s head, and she jerked away as the metal burned her skin, pleading through the tape over her mouth. It was clear that Pip wished to pull the trigger, but he could not.
He has his instructions, thought Artemis. He must wait until the allotted time has run out. Otherwise he cannot be certain that Opal is secure in the nuclear reactor.
Artemis deactivated the microphone and was moving toward the door when Holly caught his arm.
“There’s no time,” she said, correctly guessing that he was headed for home.
“I must try to save my family from the next stage of Opal’s plan,” said Artemis tersely. “There are five minutes left. If I can make it to a magma vent, we might be able to outrun the explosions to the surface.”
Commander Kelp quickly weighed his options. He could order Artemis to remain underground, but it would certainly be strategically advantageous to have someone track Opal Koboi if she somehow escaped from Atlantis.
“Go,” he said. “Captain Short will pilot you and Butler to the surface. Stay in contact if…”
He did not finish the sentence, but everyone in the room could guess what he had been about to say.
Stay in contact if…there is anything left to contact.
The Deeps, Atlantis
Opal did not enjoy being forced into the depths of the tube by a flat-topped ramrod, but once she was down inside the neutron crust, she felt quite snuggly, cushioned by a fluffy layer of anti-rad foam.
One is like a caterpillar in a chrysalis, she thought, only a little irked by the rough material of her anti-rad suit. I am about to transform into the godhead. I am about to arrive at my destiny. Bow down, creatures, or bear thine own blindness.
Then she thought, Bear thine own blindness? Is that too much?
There was a niggly doubt in the back of Opal’s head that she had actually made a horrific mistake by setting this plan in motion. It was her most radical maneuver ever, and thousands of fairies and humans would die. Worse still, she herself might cease to exist, or morph into some kind of time-mutant. But Opal dealt with these worries by simply refusing to engage with them. It was childish, she knew; but Opal was ninety percent convinced that she was cosmically ordained to be the first Quantum Being.
The alternative was too abhorrent to be entertained for long: she, Opal Koboi, would be forced to live out her days as a common prisoner in the Deeps, an object of ridicule and derision. The subject of morality tales and school projects. A chimp in a zoo for the Atlantis fairies to stare at with round eyes. To kill everyone or even die herself would be infinitely preferable. Not that she would die. The tube would contain her energy; and with enough concentration, she would become a nuclear version of herself.
One feels one’s destiny at hand. Any minute now.
Haven City
Artemis, Butler, and Holly took the express elevator to Police Plaza’s own shuttleport, which was connected to a magma vent from the earth’s core that supplied much of the city’s power through geothermal rods. Artemis did not speak to the others; he simply muttered to himself and rapped the steel wall of the elevator with his knuckles.
Holly was relieved to find that there was no pattern in the rappings, unless, of course, the pattern was too complicated for her to perceive it. It wouldn’t be the first time Artemis’s thought process had been beyond her grasp.